


crusted over in ash and mud

by sporeshroom



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Just in the first chapter though, first attempt at writing bug gore, kind of want to completely revise the first ch bc hmmm. maybe when I have time, skewed perception of interpersonal relationships (bc of tpk), so like 3rd person but skewed and opinionated, third person limited bc thats fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26462563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporeshroom/pseuds/sporeshroom
Summary: Cursed are those who turn against the King.The Knight gets a travel partner that they won't have to worry about keeping alive. Xero gets a chance to see how the world has aged.
Relationships: Broken Vessel | Lost Kin & Markoth, Markoth & Xero (Hollow Knight), The Knight & Xero (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 39





	1. In a Graveyard

**Author's Note:**

> i thought about this for 30 minutes and then wrote for like 40 so i mean it is what it is
> 
> listen to the bug collector by haley heynderickx because it is an incredible song

How can an immortal love a mortal in any way that matters? To do so would be the exception. The Pale King is no exception, in this regard.

The Pale King loved Xero as an audience loves conflict. As a short story loves a first kiss. The idea of occasion, of substance, of action _fascinated_ him. Ultimately he wanted interest.

Immortals do not live life as the rest do. How can they? Life is so long and so safe and so boring for an immortal. Faces and names and places change. The world around them withers and grows. Everything else is the same. Every pattern and every word and every thought has been seen before and will be seen again. Worship and obedience. Growth and decay. Always a pattern.

For a short while, Xero had been a difference. Dull red carapace among the white silks. Quiet whispers between shells and flecks of void in his helmet. Vessels spirited away and voices raised on the streets.

_How can a vessel be empty when it is full of void?_

_The ground moves below us._

The bugs of Hallownest were always so concerned with whether anything conspired against them from all around. They should have had more faith in their king.

The Pale King found Xero to be wrong. Eventually he bored of dull red, and sharp helmets, and vessel horns scratched into the walls of his capital. He longed to take Xero by the thorax, look up through the void blessing he hid behind in his helmet, to look into his white eyes. He wished to be the one there at the time, to slip his claws under Xero’s helmet, to pierce the chitin there. He wanted nothing more than to bury his hands inside the flesh under his mandibles, to flex, and watch how the ant’s face cracked apart. He wanted to see his white claws green and crusting with haemolymph, to drain all the colour from Xero’s shell and keep it for himself. That, after all, was love.

As a king, he had better things to do. He hears that Dryya stabbed him straight through the thorax with her hooked lance, and yanked it back out. Xero’s nerve cord came out, wrapped around the spikes. It was the second best option. How romantic, to be afforded the attention of the King’s best knight, and the Root’s favoured, in the King’s absence.

And then, peace. The search for a truly hollow vessel continued. Xero’s name and face were forgotten, his blip on the heart monitor one with the others.

One final acknowledgment, a last romantic act, the King commissioned a grave for his most vocal insurrectionist so far.

_Cursed are those who turn against the King._

A red moth turned over a red helmet in his claws. A warrior lay on the table, middle wrapped up in bandages like a spool of thread. The moth had gone out that morning, to widen his grave so the horns of the helmet would fit. It would be wrong to bury the warrior without it.

A gruesome thing, to hold another insect’s so precious belongings in warm hands, knowing that you would never be allowed any near it in that bug’s life. Strangers when living, patients in death. The gravemaker lay the warrior into his grave that afternoon. With this, his 100th service to the dead completes. His probation lifted, he can choose to enter the service of the dead more permanently, as is typical and expected of moths.

He held no issue with the dead. He was raised to know them as he knows the others of his community, of his family.

The gravemaker lifted a nail instead. He had nowhere he needed to be. Supposedly, he simply wanted to move. But there was a truth in this Kingdom, somewhere, and he would find it. The new pale monarch who would declare himself god, the gravitational centre of the land, was new as far as forces of nature go. The Pale King was the source of all sentience in Hallownest— a known fact— and perhaps the sum total of moth knowledge no longer contained the means to dispute this.

But down below, the humming of the Hive still speaks to an older light. The light at the world’s crown, that which guides them and by which they swear. For a light older than the monarch’s blinding white to exist, for there to be knowledge of it, there surely was sentience before the King. It was hardly as if gods and monarchs never lied.

For there was civilisation outside of Hallownest, too. In Deepnest, feared; in Greenpath, domesticated; in the Hive, erased from common knowledge. Lies so blatant and obvious, and yet so far spread and by now truly rooted into the land. The Pale King was certainly good at lying, or just good at enforcing his truth; a Wyrm would twist the world around it to fit, an old habits certainly seemed to die hard. What had become of every civilisation to stand independent? Shunned, controlled, erased.

The lands the moths inhabited were new; they had moved from somewhere at the start of the Pale King’s reign, this he knew. Perhaps they had been another civilisation once too. Surely, if their old lands were found, so too would proof of the monarch’s lies. More importantly, so too would their history.

The gravemaker’s mother wished him well with sad, purple eyes. She burned his face into her mind, for her vision was going and would long be gone; however his journey ended, she would never see him again.

Xero’s stands above his grave, mid Resting Grounds. His headstone is central, a testament supposedly to the strength of the King. It was not what Xero would have done for a traitor to himself; let them rot beneath the dirt, in obscurity. Cast them to the ash flaking from the shell that forms the kingdom’s borders. Give no others the courage of precedent, or solidarity. Allow no martyrs.

Of course, Xero doesn’t remember his actual death. A small mercy, or perhaps a large one. Maybe it was not one that could be redeemed into martyrdom. If he was going to die either way he’d wish for some impact, some purpose to it. He is remembered now through those he drew from the earth, and those he returned to it. Has his support system fallen without him? How many little vessels lie crumbling around this known world? Had his interference really, truly, improved the lives of those children? Or was he only delaying the inevitable?

So Xero’s grave is a monument at the centre of the Resting Grounds. A warning, to those who would spread dissent. In death, Xero feels vindicated.

No would be dissident worth anything at all would find fear in the old worship grounds of a forgotten god, raging in opposition to the pale thing sitting selfish enough to shove her off her throne, and then abandon the thing altogether for one that is new. The very rocks shiver with anguish, heat under her presence. He knows this warmth, felt it in his final months, warming his shell, heating the flesh under his chitin, boiling the haemolymph in his veins. It seared, and he burned up from the inside out. This, the warmth makes him remember.

Here, the warmth is pleasant, is comforting. Perhaps the god finds comfort here too, seeing her likeness in the air, her memory in the graves, her legacy weaving through the Resting Grounds. Xero, and maybe the other dead when they were around, recognised the heat for what it is. But he is a ghost, and an old god’s fever cannot rip through him now. He can only wait for the living to find out.

To still be around, to be the only ghost in the public grounds is lonely. Almost humiliating. But the only one who knows to acknowledge him is blind now, and to be unseen undoes his shame at his inability to let go.

He would have to be released by another, or finish his business with the living, if he wishes to leave now. But his business is the wellbeing of the vessels, and there is no telling where they might be. Certainly, the void has no business with ghosts. Insects with flesh under their shades, and those with shades inside die different, in the end. Xero has seen enough of both to know this.

So, alone and unresolved, Xero waits. He sleeps. He dreams.

Visitors ebb and graves flow while the fallen warrior dreams. It is a long time between the last grave and the next visitor to the Resting Grounds. When that visitor arrives, they linger at his grave.

The shade inside their shell calls to the traces of void left in his helmet, from every formless shade he had hid there, as he carried them in this manner, up through the city, out through the wastes, and into the relative safety of Deepnest. There, they could find or build a new shell. He had helped many with this. Each left their own mark on his soul, and their own gift to his shell. He carried the memory of their void even in this dream.

But this little vessel isn’t one he recognises. And they don’t recognise him, or even seem to know that he’s there. So they move on.

And again, Xero waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so yeah there's an obvious disconnect between how tpk thinks of himself and his actions and how everyone else does


	2. Out into the City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh ive locked myself into doing chapter titles for this so get ready for some more prepositional phrases
> 
> if you saw ch2 before I deleted it and added uhhhhh 3k more words. no you didnt <3

The little vessel looks up at Xero, into the eyes visible through his helmet, and they listen. Or maybe they just wait for him to finish speaking.

The world has surely changed since his death. He knows not the state of anything outside of the main cavern of the Resting Grounds. But, if it could be helped, Xero would not see another vessel march to their death at the hands of the Pale King and his White Court. Children should not need to die for their father; in his support, or faced against him. And so many vessels were dead. How many in the abyss are still whole? How many are corpses? Or separated shades and shells, alive, but never to be whole again?

Xero does not want this one to die.

But when he is finished speaking, the vessel wastes no time in drawing their nail. It’s cracked up the sides, dust crammed into the scratches, and part of the binding on the handle is peeling off. It’s hardly fit for tiktiks and vengeflies, and Xero was a highly skilled warrior in his life.

That part of him grates at being fought with something a week from falling apart. The rest rails against it with this thought; a child is wandering the wilds alone with only this.

Still, he knows this fight won’t rest on calibre of weaponry; he is a spirit tied to a twenty metre stretch, and the little vessel is not someone that can die by his hand. As long as their shade is intact, their shell will find a way back to it, and they will become whole again.

The fight is maybe one of the most painless in Xero’s career. With every hit he’s pushed further into the air, weightless with no physical presence. Essence stutters out from every cut, and dissolves into the air. He has no organs to damage, and no haemolymph to lose anymore. He exists only as essence swirling with the smallest traces of the void, bound together to take on the appearance of his body in life.

He’s not sure if his armour is detachable anymore, or if it’s replaced his shell as exoskeleton in death. It’s all made of the same material now; no difference between carapace and metal, though the line blurs in some living shells anyways.

The vessel shakes when his nails strike their shell, void covering their body as thorns rip through it, reaching into the air for some short seconds, before retreating. If any of it hurts, there is no indication.

They don’t seem to know what to make of him, and their nail hisses past Xero’s shell more than it hits. They can’t reach him without jumping into the air, and in this time he glides away.

His nails, however, are not so limited in range. When his first strike hit the vessel through the shoulder, the thorns caught his left leg, snagging it below the first joint. It hangs by a ligament, dragging over the top of the graves as he moves. It’s a wonder it doesn’t fall off. Xero knows when it hits the headstones, and still feels no pain.

The vessel seems distracted by it, and the next nail hits. This time, Xero watches for the thorns.

Even with their thorns and the soul sealing up their shell, the little vessel isn’t fast enough the first time around. Xero sends one of his two nails down, and it pierces true, buried through one empty eye socket to the hilt, while the other just stares.

The vessel shudders like a loose windowpane in a storm. A shriek, the first noise Xero’s heard from them, rips out as their skull _cracks_ diagonally, split from horn to cheek, and their shade tears off their shell like tissue paper.

Their cracked mask _bounces_. The rest of their carapace smashes against the packed dirt floor, shattering into the soul from which it was formed. It lingers in the air as a million pieces of glassy dust that the shade absorbs while Xero watches.

The shade turns away, drifting over to hover by the entrance the little vessel had walked through, likely eager to be reunited.

Without a witness to anchor him, Xero folds back into the first layer of dreams, where tethered spirits reside.

There, he examines his leg. Xero grabs for the almost severed part of the limb, holds the stretched ligament and crushed exoskeleton to its proper position and _focuses_. Essence draws in from where it lingers thick in the air of the Resting Grounds, remnants of every old ghost and their dead dreams. It layers over the joint like a patch, and he watches in fascination as the shell welds together under his hands.

He jerks away, focus broken when he realises that it had begun to weld too well. The chitin on his palms is heated and rough from where it too started to melt into the healing joint. Something for him to keep in mind if he’s still around at the end of the vessel’s fight.

With this, the patter of quick footsteps on the ground announces the arrival of the shell. Their eye sockets are a different empty than before, and there are hairline fractures all over them; before Xero could see only the void in their eyes, and now he sees the inside of their skull.

The shade floats over to reunite and, as he watches, slashes out will a wispy nail that catches the shell across the thorax.

A breath Xero doesn’t need to take catches in his throat anyways; never has he seen a shade be violent to its shell. This one doesn’t seem to recognise itself at all.

Still, he watches, as the shell jumps over a spell aimed for them, and sends the same back. It shreds through the shade, which tries to pull away even as it’s absorbed bit by bit. The void returns to the shell, and the soul dust from the old carapace seals up the fractures. Again, the little vessel draws their nail.

On the fourth fight, Xero shatters. He can feel his existence pulsing in and out like a heartbeat. The Resting Grounds fade to black and reappear in his vision and the little vessel seems to glow.

They draw a new weapon, this one glowing for certain, and beaming with the weight of dreams. They do not aim for him— rather, for his grave.

He watches the headstone crack and crumble to the ground in several chunks of rock in his layer of the dreamscape.

When he opens his eyes, the world is duller, no longer overlaid in shades of red and orange. The little vessel is gone, he is on the ground, his headstone is intact behind his back, and he can _feel it_. He doesn’t just know that it’s there.

A ridge digs into his exoskeleton, there’s a rock lodged under his leg, and dust covers his hands, and it’s very uncomfortable, but for the first time in what Xero suspects has been a long, long time— he can _feel_ it.

He is still dead, most certainly. His corpse is still decomposing in the earth directly below where he sits. But Xero is no longer trapped in his rotting body’s dream; shell and spirit have separated, and the ghost is free to move.

To _leave_.

When the little vessel next passes through, he follows them out. Xero knows that they have no words, but they give no sign of minding. He could go elsewhere if they did, could venture the world by himself. They are resilient, but he would still like to see them safe, or at least alive. They seem to glance back at every other turn, as if to check that he is still there.

Down they go, in an elevator Xero remembers as still being under construction; how long ago must that have been? At the bottom, Hallownest’s elite still swarm their opulent hallways, though the paint on the tapestries has melted and waterstained, and the moulded smell of the carpet rises into the air. The little vessel has no nose to be bothered, and Xero could always choose not to experience that part of the waking world if it bothered him so— though he would never do that, too enamoured with his second glance at the world to mind the rot. With the infected bourgeois as the only other inhabitants, there is no one whom the decay could bother.

The vessel slashes and jabs at the husks that get too close, gelatinous infection sliding from corpse wounds to the floor, adding to the carpet stains. Xero is displeased to find he can barely manifest the soul to form one of his nails, though he supposes there was no reason his move out from the Resting Grounds would ever be easy.

In the end, the help he tries to provide is inconsequential. The little bug ducks around the majority of the husks, dipping through the halls, down into the lower levels of the building, which seem to have lead to a stag station. They glance back once more, before tucking themselves into the darkness on one of the platforms, and disappearing through the entrance.

Xero finds them slumped over on a bench, restringing a bracelet. It looks similar to the ones tangled up in little cardboard boxes on the counters of every charm and travel shop in Hallownest— in the Hallownest Xero remembers. After a couple of tries, the vessel seems happy with their configuration. In their tiny hands, it is obvious that the bracelet was made for much larger bugs. The chain would be far too loose on their wrist, Xero thinks, and they know this too.

They duck their head to sling the chain over their horns, holding on to both ends so the charms don’t slide off, and start to fiddle with the clasp. They tuck their chin to their chest to better see what they’re doing, but it doesn’t seem to help.

Xero decides to sit next to the vessel while he waits for them. He’s not yet sure if he’ll get tired, but it’s nice to at least pretend to interact with the world like the living do.

At last, the little vessel hops off the bench in triumph, their shiny necklace disappearing beneath their cloak. It was wilful ignorance, surely, for Hallownest’s old monarchs to ever believe their children— _children_ — to be without mind or will. Or perhaps their children came to be as good at lying as their parents.

Xero follows the little vessel, and he really must find a name for them soon, through the stag station, and outside into the city streets. They pass a couple blocks down, and start to explore an unlocked doors there. It seems that they had already begun to explore the area when Xero joined them.

He’s still not said a word to them since reawakening, but they don’t seem to mind.

They slow to a stop at a large door, closing this part of the city off from the rest. Likely a measure to protect Hallownest’s richest from those infected. Ultimately useless, as the infection came through dreams, more so than through physical contact. The vessel grabs their nail with both hands and swings it at a large metal lever like it’s a bat. The metal clangs, and the door shudders and drops into the floor.

They dash out into the rain, and Xero follows. The little vessel stops at the base of a towing fountain. Rains pours, heavy and blue black, dripping off four stone masks, and two tall, serrated horns. A line of thread darts across his vision, flashing white in the low light from the lumafly lanterns, and another bug drops herself to the ground in front of the fountain, her red cloak flaring.

“Again we meet, little ghost.” She says. It is strange to hear the other referred to in that way, when he was the one who was dead, but Xero’s sets that aside and drifts away. This seems to be a conversation for the little vessel to hear only, and he has no need to hear it.

It doesn’t take long for the spider to throw her needle and thread, and swing off again leaving them alone. When Xero returns, he finds them, craning their neck to look up at the statue.

On the plaque:

_MEMORIAL TO THE_

_HOLLOW KNIGHT_

_In the Black Vault far above._

_Through its sacrifice Hallownest lasts eternal._

So that was it. The King’s final vessel and their legacy. Even after their life was forfeited to tie up the King’s loose ends, he would not acknowledge them as more than an object. Even in memoriam.

The last line of this sad little obituary, in particular catches Xero’s attention. Not the least for the almost comical presumption that Hallownest would last eternal, carved there on weatherbeaten stone face, in a city now belonging to the infected and to the carelessness and callousness of the Soul Sanctum. Those two words, _its sacrifice_ , Xero thinks clever. Did the Hollow Knight make a sacrifice or were they made sacrifice? It is not untruthful, and it leaves the answer a decision for the viewer to make. So yes, a clever little manipulation of language. The Pale King had always liked to control communications; word choice, standardisation (homogenisation) of Hallownest’s language,giving his children no mouths with which to speak. Taking away the voices they found for themselves.

There is a growing alarm, as Xero wonders if he’s played into that with the other little voidlings he has met. Had he truly let them speak, in whatever way they could? Was he listening? It has been so long, all the details have eroded from his memories. He will just have to try better for this one. Try to listen to what they have to say. There’s a good place to start for that.

“Do you have a name? I have been calling you little vessel in my head, but that is what you were made to be, and not what you are. It is inaccurate in any case. There is only one vessel,” He nods at the statue.

They stare, maybe unsure how to tell him. He tries to help. “That spider…she called you Little Ghost. Could that be your name?” _Is it? Or could it become so?_ They shrug, point to the memorial, and tilt their head. A question, likely. “Their name? I died before their time, but I suppose it was the Hollow Knight. If they were given another name, the King didn’t care to have it be known. Same as he did not care to name his thousands of other children, and did not care to even admit that they were alive.” _You included_ , Xero thinks, but he knows how to be truthful without being harsh. “Do you know much of the King’s actions? He seemed to have a way of making everyone forget.”

They stare, and he wonders if he’s off base, and then they slowly shake their head, and wave him over with one hand. Xero floats over to stand by them, and they look at the plaque. They cover the word ‘HOLLOW’ as best they can with their right hand, and pointedly tap ‘THE’, then ‘KNIGHT’, then their own mask with their left. So Hallownest’s language was left to them. _It would make sense_ , he supposes, _for the King to allow them that; how better to influence a bug then when you are unseen? Leave it to the environment, and they’ll think the conclusions you draw them to are ones they found on their own. They won’t even know you were involved at all. But I digress._

“You are The Knight?” He asks. They nod. “Very well then. I think that will be less confusing for me, than if we were both ‘the ghost’.” A pause, then a short, sharp nod.

The Knight looks up at this strange spirit. They know that they came to this land for a reason, know that there is something they need to do, but the second they entered every detail was wiped away like chalk with water. Something in Hallownest’s very air just seems to coat the inside of their skull, trapping everything they knew inside. But this ghost, he knows who they are, or at least what. Before him, it had been only Hornet, and she spoke in riddles and killed them over and over. Xero had too, but they had chosen to fight him. They weren’t cornered, nor was path their blocked.

They had known, not long into their travels, that they would have to go alone. They could not be responsible for the life of another, when they could not even protect their own. The stakes were lower for them than for other bugs, which was why they could go about as they did. Quirrel was an exception, seeming to appear at every corner of the map, but he never stayed around for long. But Xero was already dead, and he seemed to know more about what they were doing than they did. And he was the only person to know their name, the only person they had been able to tell. That had to count for something.

The Knight waves for Xero to follow, and dashes back along the cleared path to King’s Station. It is such a relief to have a stag station in the city that they would not have to climb and jump up past all the flying sentries to reach. This way is far easier. When they glance back, Xero is still following behind them, floating past the giant red shelled sentries. They’d have to kill one at some point, to learn what The Hunter had to say about them. They had tried once, and the one up in the Resting Grounds had caught them with its sword, and the force of the blow had thrown them almost to the opposite wall, their mask crunching against the rock. So that will have to wait for later.

They climb up to the one functional platform remaining in the station, and use their nail to reach the bell. The Last Stag comes up thundering out of the tunnel, and they point to the Greenpath stop on the stag lines map.

It’s a job for The Last Stag, yes, but it seems to be something he enjoys doing. And in his enthusiasm for what he does, he doesn’t mind that The Knight didn’t know what the stag lines were, or how they worked. He doesn’t mind that they can’t tell him out loud where they want to go. He listens to what they try to say, and they listen to everything he decides to tell them.

When they hop off at Greenpath they notice they’ve lost their ghostly entourage, and hurry back to the platform.

The Last Stag snorts when they point to King’s Station on the map. “Forget something? I can take you back no problem.” And he does.

A few hundred metres from King’s Station, at the first intersection, a burst of glowing essence shoots into the seats behind The Knight. The Knight turns around in time to watch it solidify into their ghostly friend(?) (Friend.).

It’s hard to tell behind his armour, but they think Xero might be laughing at himself. “I think in future, I will have to actually use the seats so I am not left behind. I did not expect even a stag to be that fast, in his age. Ah, but that’s rude and he left me in the dust for it, even if neither of us knew I was insulting him like that.” The Knight scoots from the centre of the front row over to the left. Xero jumps over from the back row, into the space they left for him, noticeably keeping hold of the seat the whole time. “Thank you,” he says, “For coming back for me.” They nod.

It’s a short climb up from the Greenpath station. The Knight already had their destination in mind, and it doesn’t take long to arrive.

Xero drops to the ground, electing to walk through the passageway just before the cavern. The ceiling is still low enough that he has to crouch slightly so that the horns of his helmet don’t scrape. The Knight is glad that that’s never an issue they have had. What a curse, they think it would be, to grow too large for the world around you.

There’s a sudden drop, at the tunnels end, and they jump down into the large cave. Bad memories lingered here still— needle in shell, thread lashing at their skin. And there— in the centre of the cave, still. It is not only their memories in this room.

The other vessel— for regardless of what they choose to be, there is no ignoring the matter of how they were _made_ to be— lies face to the dirt. Their nail, lodged in their chest, props them up from the ground.

The Knight had seen them like this already. Had left them like this. Before they had seen the Resting Grounds, before they had known— _remembered_ — that this bug was like them, they had left them here to rest and to rot, alone. _Their sibling_ , they think. Impaled with their own nail, likely not minutes before they fell through that tunnel for the first time, and all they did for them was steal their cloak. They couldn’t even give it back, because it was far too useful. The Knight didn’t want to give it back.

It was far easier to think of them as another mindless thing; another obble or squit to be reabsorbed by Greenpath by the time The Knight left the cave. Then there’s a guilt. Ignoring the sentience of another being for their own comfort isn’t something they want to do. They think of the Hollow Knight, another sibling, and _its_ sacrifice. They’re beginning to feel a resemblance forming, to a bug that they’ve never met, but who is ever present. To act like the bug who may have been their father…an ugly thing to be, to say the least. An awful thing to understand, even briefly, even minutely.

They will not accept that standard for themself. Even so…there is not much for them to feel. Guilt, over their own actions and inactions and thoughts, certainly. But for the other vessel? Nothing. As hollow as they were meant to be.

Xero had knelt by their corpse. He was waiting for them, and when he has their attention he speaks. “The Pale King wanted the perfect vessel to solve his problem. He wanted something that could react sentiently, without actually having a mind. He wanted something empty,” He watches them for any sign to stop, but they want to listen. He continues. “And the King continued to create children, hoping that one would be truly Hollow, perfect for his purpose. He had very high standards, ones that no child could ever hope to meet. That nothing could hope to meet.”

Xero turns to the corpse.

“He discarded thousands of children, left them to erode deep under the Kingdom. Many were deeply disgusted by his treatment of life, when I was alive. Some of his children escaped, and there were bugs willing to help. I thought surely, there was a better way to fight the plague than through child sacrifice.” Tentatively, Xero reaches for the shoulders of the empty shell. His hands glow, dissolving into essence at the end, but he finds grip. “I was made an example of, my grave central in the Resting Grounds as a warning,” Delicately, he rolls the corpse, their _sibling_ , to face upwards. “I imagine he was less forthcoming with his plans to the public, after that as well.” He turns to The Knight, hands reforming when they come away from the corpse, and he gestures to the nail wedged in the shell.

The Knight nods, and steps forward. This nail is like theirs, almost exactly. The hilt is slightly longer, and the blade maybe the smallest bit thinner, but when they pull it free, the weight in their hands feels the same.

They stab the needle down into the soft dirt behind the other vessel. Their weapon, their murder weapon, and now their headstone. The Knight isn’t sure if this is a respect or a disrespect to them, but it’s all they can do for them right now, excepting— they fiddle with the clasp of their cloak. They don’t take it off, or move to, they just— consider.

Xero notices; the corpse’s cloak slightly too short, The Knight’s just a bit too long. He says nothing, and kneels once more. They sit beside him, at their sibling’s grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was thinking abt having the knight go to write their name and not be able to form the words but then realised it was raining and the paper would get fucked
> 
> also that one line "What a curse, they think it would be, to grow too large for the world around you" I wrote it and was like hmmm yes great I am trying to foreshadow for a completely different story lmao


End file.
